Please never ever do this kind of meditation. Besides this is not zazen, this meditation is dangerous.

I am not here nor there.I am not right nor wrong.I do not exist neither non-exist.I am not I nor non-I.I am not in samsara nor nirvana.To All Buddhas, I bow down for the teaching of emptiness. Thank You!

I do not choose to do zazen as my "practice".Here's my personal view.If a tock a rock...lets say it weighed 10kg, and placed it on a mat....it's "mind" would be totally empty.All right, it doesn't have a "mind" then, it's just a dumb rock.But it's "nature" is totally empty.So how long, just sitting there with an empty "nature" would it take that rock before it became a 10kg Buddha?Obviously, it wouldn't.Now, we have a sentient being, a human. This human sentient being sits on a mat in zazen and counts his or her breaths.After some time there "mind" is totally "empty".My question is, if that sentient human being keeps sitting on that mat with a totally empty "mind", how is that sentient being any different from that rock?And if that rock doesn't become a Buddha, then why would that sentient human being ever become a Buddha either?O.K. I understand why a beginner, perhaps unable to concentrate and with a mind racing about wildly, might be taught to do zazen to develop stillness and relax their mind. I can even acknowledge the value of a period of zazen for a more advanced practitioner to calm and quiet his or her mind in order to go on to other practices after he or she got into that calm an peaceful stillness state.So my real question to those who do zazen repeatedly or every day is: so o.k., now you and the rock are the same.But YOU are a sentient being, not a rock, So, for you, What is Next?Zazen has it's purposes, but there is a time to go on to the next step. That's really all I am saying.Once again, this is only my personal opinion, and others may disagree (and very likely will).

Which leads me to this poem I herad somewhere:

A monk sits in meditation on a mat, and will not lie down.Or a corpse lies on the floor and can not sit up.Tell me then, why are these both not mindless corpses?

Shame on you Shakyamuni for setting the precedent of leaving home.Did you think it was not there-- in your wife's lovely face in your baby's laughter?Did you think you had to go elsewhere (simply) to find it? from - Judyth Collin The Layman's Lament From What Book, 1998, p. 52 Edited by Gary Gach

Beatzen wrote:The avatamsaka sutra instructs to empty the mind of discursive thought. How is this dangerous. Do you even practice zazen?

How do you empty the mind of discursive thought?

If thought appears, what do you do?

I am not here nor there.I am not right nor wrong.I do not exist neither non-exist.I am not I nor non-I.I am not in samsara nor nirvana.To All Buddhas, I bow down for the teaching of emptiness. Thank You!

Beatzen wrote:But in zazen, we aren't doing such things. Steadying the mind on the breath in the tanden region, we empty our mind of it's contents and relax into glimpsing our original face.

Where is this kind of seated meditation from? What text, which teacher?Sitting down, focusing on breath, in the tanden region, emptying the mind of its contents, relaxing, glimpsing the original face.

Well, that's quite a complicated and restrictive practice with several steps to go through, not to mention understanding many foreign and obscure concepts. No doubt this is a possible form of seated meditation, but it's hardly uncontrived or unique/universal in Zen.

"There is no such thing as the real mind. Ridding yourself of delusion: that's the real mind."(Sheng-yen: Getting the Buddha Mind, p 73)

Us ritualists are a varied lot. In my case, Buddhism began with contact with Zen, and a complete misunderstanding of it. This led to some reading and meditation and wound up in the Gelug tradition. Not all Gelugs are completely comfortable with the ritualistic side of things. I just do a little, based on the idea that well, if it worked that well for the Dalai Lama, and so many other lamas, there must be something at the core of these practices, something effective. And there does in fact seem to be more going on in the rituals than mere repetitious behaviour.

In many Zen centres they carefully explain to you how to sit, how to walk, how to eat, how to bow, etc. And when it comes to what to do actually when you're supposed to meditate, that is, what to do with the mind, they can only say a few words like "just let it go", "only don't know", and such. I call this super-ritualistic and quite uninformative.

"There is no such thing as the real mind. Ridding yourself of delusion: that's the real mind."(Sheng-yen: Getting the Buddha Mind, p 73)